Quote-times: Uses
by David
Here are two of the most powerful quotes from Paul Farmer’s The Uses of Haiti. This book isn’t so much an academic essay as it is a simmering diatribe against the developed world’s (and, especially, the U.S.’s) treatment of Haiti. The gist of Farmer’s impassioned argument is that Haiti has been systematically used by foreign powers, leading to a nation that is the clichéd “poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.” It’s not a feel-good story.
Poor Haitians all too easily become pawns in a match that has been increasingl open and brutal. The stakes are life and death, but mostly death.
[quoting Jean-Bertrand Aristide] …Whereas every day 24,000 people die of hunger (that makes 4 deaths every second), 1.1 billion poor people live without access to clean drinking water. And yet 70% of the surface of the earth is covered with water. Diseases associated with this precious liquid are the cause of one third of the deaths recorded in developing countries….As for tropical forests, they are disappearing at a rate of 11.3 million hectares per year [27.9 million acres]. Between 1940 and 2002, Haiti’s forest cover shrank from 40% to 1%. Our compatriots, fleeing the disastrous consequences of economic sanctions unjustly applied to Haiti, rush, like the soil, towards the sea….
Soon, in 2004, we will celebrate the bicentenary of our independence, not on our knees but standing on our feet. Standing in the shadow of Toussaint Louverture, Dessalines, Martin Luther King and alongside you, dear and true friends of Haiti. From this day forward, let us all stand up with dignity and courage, together with the 800 million hungry people and the 854 million illiterate people on our planet to revive its social, economic, and ecological fabric.